Workmen's advocate., 1887-04-02
CAPITAL MEANS lMPOVERlSH.
 MENT.
DIR. A. DOUAI.

| llc dDO'c ucddll1 scclHo lO oc utterly ridiculous, Among any one hundred persons who claim educa- ton and intelligence, perhaps not one would admit the above proposi- tjon true. Yet we are going to prove 1t.
 No capitalist would care to en- ploy labor, unless he had the hope or the certainty of receiving for his employment of labor, beside his out Iav for wages and materials, profit. From this fact 1t follows that he will never, if he can help 1t, pay wages as high as the laborer would earn if he could employ himself and his own means of labor, and find a mar ket for his merchandise.
 Laws have been enacted for the very purpose of preventing more and more workers from finding means of work and self-employment. Land, capital and higher education have by legal tricks been gradually mo- nopollzed for the purpose of forcing, through the lack of means of labor, a multitude of persons to enter the employment of capitalists. And the ultimate purpose has been, of course, to not pay in wages the full value of labor, in order to realize a profit for the capitalists beyond what they might earn by directing and super intending labor. This becomes evi- dent from the well-known fact that modern production is more and more carried on by capitalistic con- panies who furnish the capital and receive high dividends for doing nothing, while the directing talent is hired at high salaries. and the work is done by labor which receives less than It's real earnings.
 Well, this being conceded, let us see what becomes of the profits? In a great portion they are consumed by being accumulated into new cap- ital, which is to serve for enlarging capitalistic enterprises, in order to exploit the same or other laborers by profitable employment. So far as this is the case the profit never goes back to the persons who have earned, but lost, the profits. And as they receive in wages less than their work is worth-who can deny that they are being gradually impoverished :
 Will the objection be raised that, if they were not employed by capital ists, they would starve since they dc not own the means for labor? But they are not in fault, if they lack them, so long as they never receive the full value of their working force. The laws are in fault, and it is i'm pudent to conclude that the workers, by obedience to the superior power of the laws. should have forfeited the right to q large portion of theil real earnings.
 Another portion of the profits goes toward defraying the expenses of the luxurious life of the capital ists. In this way it certainly does not make up for what the labor ot the earners of those profits have lost. In this way other laborers who pro duce luxuries for capitalists may find employment, but they are mol rewarded for their work by its ful value any more than the others.
 Thus it appears that the employ ment of wage labor by capitalist: who divide among themselves tht profits, resembles the folly of those agriculturists who never manure their fields. who never give to tn, soil back those chemical elements O, fruitfulness which they have eX tracted by crops upon crops from tht soil, till 1t becomes utterly barren Such soil is called impoverished poor, useless. Why should we then. hesitate at calling capital al impoverisher? A country rich il capital an impoverished country; The eapitalistic system of produc- l tion a means of impoverishing tn,